The most cinematic story in “Sequential Drawings,” titled “Touched,” depicts an apology through a series of fingertips. After tracing one finger’s journey from iPhone app to the buzzer of an apartment, the narrative switches perspectives to reveal the finger’s owner: a baseball-capped delivery person with roses for the apartment’s resident. She signs for them, discovers the “I’m sorry” note inside and is moved to email its sender. The last panel shows her finger on the “return” key of her laptop. There is no narrative or dialogue — everything is purely conveyed through visual language.

Such is the conceptual simplicity behind the little moments throughout Richard McGuire’s charming “Sequential Drawings.” Collecting over a decade’s worth of spot illustrations for The New Yorker, the art book showcases McGuire’s mastery of form and economy along with his knack for highlighting the often overlooked bits of our daily lives.

As in his loudly (and deservedly) praised 2014 graphic novel “Here,” McGuire’s singular, virtuoso approach to storytelling is again the star. Whereas “Here,” with its static living room scene and bold leaps forward and backward in time, explores a simultaneous vision of space and history, “Sequential Drawings” takes a more playful, spare and gag-like approach, wordlessly shuffling between imaginings of the secret lives of diner condiments (“Scenes From a Table”) and stylish insects (“Insect Fashion”), inventories of funny hats (“Hats”), obstructed faces on the subway (“Subway”) and ice (“Ice”).

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CreditFrom "Sequential Drawings"

City stories are a particular strength for McGuire. In the bravura opening sequence, “Three Friends,” we are presented with a banal street tableau: mailbox, parking meter, trash bin. Like all things in the city, sentient or not, they are quickly subjected to mistreatment — a moving truck backs over them, a blizzard envelops them, a puffy-jacketed dog treads over them. Seasons change, bikes get locked to them and subsequently stolen, but the three friends persevere on their sidewalk, a little dinged and maybe urine-stained, but unbroken.

In the equally notable city sequence “Pigeon,” we watch our titular hero (comically drawn by McGuire with an exaggeratedly round body and a tiny noggin) as it contemplates a crumb, sticks its head in a bag and tries to connect with other avian creatures, be they fellow pigeons or those metal birds, high above. The story ends with our protagonist examining its reflection in a puddle, eyes and expression unchanged and now mirrored.

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CreditFrom "Sequential Drawings"

This mirror motif can get a bit overplayed as a final panel (two other stories, “Framed” and “Scenes From a Table,” also incorporate the move), along with its cousin, the “here’s looking directly at you” motif, repeated in the parting moments of “Subway,” “Windows,” “Birth” and “Framed” (which consists of both the mirror and the “looking directly at you” moves, though in this instance it’s actually kind of neat).

Occasional final panel quibbles aside, “Sequential Drawings” (and perhaps spot illustration in general) is meant to be light, airy and likable, and there’s a lot to like in it — not the least of which is McGuire’s ceaselessly inventive, witty and nimble sensibility. The hyperversatile McGuire has made an impressive career out of uncommon progressions, having first entered the avant-garde’s consciousness in the 1980s as the propulsive bass player in no-wave pioneers Liquid Liquid. Since then he has designed his own line of toys, written and illustrated children’s books, animated short films, illustrated covers for The New Yorker and majorly influenced the comic-book titan Chris Ware. It’s fitting that with “Sequential Drawings,” McGuire has given us another original and pleasurable work, as freewheeling, artful and exuberant as the artist himself.